Once again a similar pattern of shark occurrence was found in week two of the expedition to that in the first; shark numbers started off okay with over twenty encounters for each boat on the first session, but then numbers started to dip again coinciding with a notable reduction in the number of arrow worms in the plankton tows. On Tuesday evening Gareth and Darren did a plankton tow and found that the arrow worms had returned (although not the sharks at this stage) and we were finally optimistic for Wednesday. We were proved right with, over 150 encounters between the two boats that following day! Come Thursday however, the numbers dropped once more and we were back in the teens for encounters per boat.

The grand total in the end for week two was 391 encounters.

In week three we were joined by Peter Verhoog, CEO of the Save Our Seas Foundation and also Dr. Jennifer Schmidt of the University of Illinois, who assist us with genetic analysis of our biopsy samples. The week started off nicely, we even had large numbers of sharks at Arta at our arrival on Saturday afternoon, which Peter and Jennifer were able to enjoy. The mornings gave some great conditions for Peter to take shots of his new favourite model (Laura), so we look forward to seeing some soon!

We had also been joined by videographer Rene Heuzey who was trying to make a documentary about whale sharks. Unfortunately his needs were not necessarily those of the expedition and things were getting somewhat tense, but the team continued undeterred and totalled a respectable 369 encounters for the week. This makes a total of 1077 encounters for the expedition over the three weeks. As yet we do not know how many individual sharks were present as the photo ID will take us several weeks to complete but 61 individuals had been identified from week one so far.

Gareth also managed to deploy two mini-PAT satellite tags, one on a 5m male and the other on a 5 m female, so we look forward to hearing from these two over the coming months.

Darren, one of the MCSS team members, took control of the plankton sampling and CTD casts during the expedition and we are going to have an awful lot of data to work up, as ever!

The expedition finished with a mini whale shark conference on Saturday evening in Djibouti City organised By the Megaptera team with local vet Bernard LaFrance in conjunction with the French Cultural Centre. This gave us the opportunity to give the public some information on the results from Djibouti since monitoring started nine years ago. Overall 83% of the sharks seen have been male. The majority of individuals identified have been during the dedicated 2 or 3 week expeditions from 2009. A large proportion of the sharks are resighted in subsequent years with some sharks having been seen over six years.

So all too quickly the 2012 Djibouti whale shark expedition has come to a successful conclusion. It was a trip of mixed results shark wise, and with a few organisational issues which were largely out of our control, but the team have done a stellar job once again.

Our thanks to our partner organisation Megaptera and their staff, Michel Vely, Daniel Jouannet and Erica Domont; special thanks to the crew of the Deli, without whom the expeditions would be a nightmare! Thanks also to the Save Our Seas Foundation for their support of the programme over the last few seasons and to all the participants over the three weeks. Last but not least, a big thank you to the MCSS team, Gareth & Laura Jeffreys and Darren Whitehead for the hours of hard work and dedication that made the expedition the success that it was.